2013 Update

2012 was a very blessed year. It was filled with LOTS of travel: France, Italy, New York, California, Canada...to name a few.

New friends: AdvoCare has played a big role in our lives. It has helped me and Richie immensely, both physically and financially. It gave us a new outlet to meet new, truly inspirational people. I am blessed to call them my friends.

2012 completed our first year of marriage, and here we are about a month away from our 2nd year. A couple months ago I finished my 3rd year of teaching music at St. Frances Cabrini School. It was very difficult to let go of this job because I loved it so much, but for the sake of my family it was time to let go. The commute is absurd and I was paid little to nothing, but I did it for three years because I knew it was God's plan for me...a true vocation. I learned so much from my students and staff, I just pray I did the same for them.

Because there is so much love in that community, I haven't let go completely. I will be doing an after school children's choir once a week and I will still continue on with private voice and piano lessons. I am still directing for St. Frances Cabrini Church, and I will also be leading a prayer group every other week.

It's extremely taxing to live so far from my community (two hours with the absurd average traffic...ONE WAY), but God has shown me it is clearly time to slowly wean off, which is what I am doing.

The biggest reason being that I am currently 17 weeks and 3 days pregnant with our first child. :-) In 2ish weeks we will find out the gender of the baby!

It's been such a trip. This has been our plan all along, but it's still so surreal. I don't feel anything yet, I don't look different in any way, which is probably why it's so difficult to believe, even after 4 months of knowing. But every time I see an ultrasound (3 so far) and hear the baby's heartbeat (2 so far) it brings me back to reality.

I think the most bizarre experience so far has been the ultrasounds. I don't know what I was thinking, but for some reason I thought the baby would be very still. Maybe because I haven't seen a live sonogram since I was little in my mom's office. But the baby was waving, kicking, squirming...so cool! I thought I would cry, or at least Richie would, but we were moreso in awe.

September 16th will be a completely different story, I'm sure! I have this feeling in my gut that once I know whether it's a boy or a girl, my reservations of shopping for baby are going to go out the window and I'm going to go nuts! Ohhh, my poor wallet. :'(

Please pray for our family's health. For Baby Bernal, for mine, for Richie's. Less than 5 months to go, pray that all will go well. :-) I'm praying that this new transition of no longer being SFC's music teacher will pan out well. I know they have a fabulous new teacher. They're going to love her, she's amazing. I'm just praying I can cope with the new change.

First plus I've realized: Time freedom is fabulous. :-)